Having returned after a decade living in other parts of the country and other parts of the world. I was studying, travelling and growing up. Coming home to the family cottage on King Street in the village of West Deeping, I was ready to start a new venture on familiar ground. I’m pleased to say it’s been a success. I’ve been making fenland paintings ever since.
I had already decided that it would be a good opportunity to go full time as a painter, creating fenland art would help me to gain a a local audience to market my work to, I knew that my subject had to be the Fenland landscape.
All landscapes are unique, but this one is uniquely mine. The fenland in which I rode my bike to and from the town as a youngster was to be my home again and this time it would provide me with a way to become a self-made man.
You don’t need a reason to want to paint the landscape; looking out into the vista is an immediate-felt experience that blasts through our otherwise conceptual lives of whim and worry.
As a younger man, I believed I needed to make art that said something, whether it be political, ethical or philosophical. The slightly more refined (but only slightly) chap that came back was pleased to find that painting your local landscape, for me landscape of the Fens, lets the land and its people do the talking.
I started by making a few Cambridgeshire landscape paintings and Lincolnshire landscape paintings in oils and setting up my online representation at www.nicktearle.net. Then came the ‘Artisans on Friday’ market stall in Red Lion Square of Stamford. The paintings instantly resonated with passers-by and soon enough I had sold a couple.
The fenland landscape is captivating, though often given scant regard. For the landscape painter, however, who wants to capture its rural scenes, dramatic skies and seasonal colour shifts there are many a hidden gem. A fleeting moment when ten storey clouds hang weightlessly in the cerulean sky over the rapeseed, or the frost of a winter morning that has turned the Fen palette bleak grey.
Its isolated farm houses standing high out of shrunken peat echo the souls of Fen people living precariously below the water line. This kind of subtext or narrative adds to the drama of the paintings and has served as inspiration for writers such as Jon McGregor and Graham Swift.
I have had a string of solo exhibitions and group shows, sold over sixty original paintings, and also set up Fenland Frames. In 2017 I won the Andrew Howarth Award for my painting ‘Crowland Abbey from Cloot Drove’ and I was selected as an exhibiting member of the Lincolnshire Artists Society. Last year, I published a book in collaboration with Becky Owen-Fischer (Poet & Playwright), which we launched at a unique event at John Clare Cottage.
Art is the expression of our souls; sharing our souls helps us connect and relate better to one another and to our environment.
Painting the fens at Dusk
Dusk in the fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire is a magical time of day. Painting the fens at dusk has become my favourite time of day to study. The warmth of the last hour of the day, reflects down onto the landscape from the huge sky above. Out on a walk through the fields with my camera in hand I bask in the violet air.
The fens are a big place, usually when out and about discovering painting locations I’m miles away from any street lights, once that darkness falls, I’ll need a torch to make my way back to the car, the experience is usually a little unsettling. It is, though, the last moments before darkness falls that seem to offer up the most beautifully subtle colours.
A low and uncluttered horizon so often found in the flatlands of the fens gives us an extraordinary view of the rising moon as it drifts towards the heavens like a balloon. Dimly the moon illuminates the tonal landscape as the noise of distant commuters along the A roads fades.
In rich colours and dark foregrounds I paint the fenland landscape capturing those moments all too easily missed in our busy lives.
Nick Tearle, Fenland Artist